Copy notes with repeat 'after'

I understand the default behavior for "Repeat After..." tasks is not to copy over notes to the next task after completion, as Emily explained here: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/4080/.

However, it seems arbitrary to copy notes for "Repeat Every" and not for "Repeat After."

e.g. suppose I need to get a haircut after a month, and I use the notes to write the address and phone number of the barber. There's no benefit to making the task "Repeat Every...", because, if more than a month passes, I only ever need a single haircut, and thus, only ever need a single task to mark for completion. Yet by making it "Repeat After" the ancillary information is all lost.

At least a few other people would like this behavior changed, though at least one other person prefers the opposite, that notes NOT repeat: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/11127/ . (Though in that case, it's trivial to delete the note, whereas, it's much more involved to recover the notes from a completed task).

Perhaps there can be a global option, or a keyword in the note that triggers a repeating note, though I think just making it act like "Repeat Every..." makes the most sense. I use "Repeat After..." a lot for tasks that need regular completion only once, but without any hard deadline, and the Notes thing is a major hindrance. Any thoughts on this?

Posted at 4:36pm on October 1, 2010

(closed account) says:

I would also like to copy notes with "Repeat After", for exactly the same reasons as traycerb. I use the note-field to keep track of when I last did a repeating task that doesn't repeat with a fixed interval but *after* a fixed interval, like the haircut example above. Losing the notes with the task is major nuisance.

Posted 8 years ago

bwicks34 says:

+1

It definitely feels like the distinction between 'Repeat Every' and 'Repeat After' exists only for technology/coding reasons, not user experience reasons. I don't see why a user would want this distinction to exist. I could see that some users may want notes to exist for both and others would want them not to exist for both. Seems like an option to turn on/off for both would be the best scenario.

Posted 8 years ago

jeanniebean says:

+1

It would be nice if you could choose whether the note would be sticky at the time of creation, if it's a frustration for others to get rid of notes they don't want to repeat with a task.

Posted 8 years ago

jeremy.dolvelde says:

+1

Posted 7 years ago

pstoffel says:

+1

Although scenarios exist where you don't need notes to be copied, I can't understand why they get lost by design!

Now you can't keep a log in the notes!

Even worse: before adding a note, you now have to check "oh wait, this is a repeating task... @$*, it's repeating "after"; I must close RMilk and open up EverNote to type my notes, close that app, re-open RMilk, and then continue milking ;->"

I've just added an extra check to my "RMilk quality control" task (which was repeating AFTER :-#) to check for recently completed repeating tasks with notes... I caught 3 other unnoticed issues!

Posted 7 years ago

hspolte says:

Yes - Keeping notes should always be the default. Notes should only be deleted by actually deleting them. Please make a option to keep them.

Posted 7 years ago

mackay.multispares says:

+1If I have made notes about account numbers, etc I want to be able to refer back to them if I need to

Posted 7 years ago

jjmnz76 says:

+1

Posted 7 years ago

mlukacs says:

+1

Posted 6 years ago

amishmm says:

+ 1

I would vote for this too. In my opinion, deleting notes is a BUG and not a FEATURE as its destructive in nature and can cause data loss.

Yes you can recover notes by going to completed tasks but what you never noticed that notes were not carried for few months (because u already know what u have to do) and some day u have memory loss and suddenly realise that NOTES have disappeared!! (at trash may have emptied)

Posted 6 years ago

serodmat says:

+1 !!!

Posted 6 years ago

cise says:

+1

thanks to traycerb for the cogent original post. I've found my completed notes and for the moment I'll store them elsewhere. But I was already looking for an option to keep/copy notes from completed repeating tasks.

Posted 6 years ago

codyeilrich says:

+1

Please add!

Posted 6 years ago

tvjames says:

Yeah, I had one for "Replace smoke detector batteries" after 6 months. The notes told me which detectors took which battery types (surprisingly, not all use 9 volts, but all require a really tall ladder). It would be nice if there were a checkbox on the task that said "Copy this note to repeated task" Then you could have on a note-by-note basis a little more flexibility.

Posted 6 years ago

joseph.miller.esq says:

+1 Totally agree.

Posted 6 years ago

zvi.likes.tv says:

+1 Please add

Posted 6 years ago

mila77 says:

+1 please fix that

Posted 6 years ago

sklika says:

+1

Posted 6 years ago

doshit says:

+1

Posted 5 years ago

mr.clifford says:

+1

Posted 5 years ago

bueccd says:

I like to keep notes with recurring tasks so I don't have to store my personal tips "somewhere else" when I get around to completing that task the next time. Now I have to consider making all those kinds of tasks repeat EVERY even though in terms of my personal behavior I want to repeat it AFTER. That gets me into the bad habit of marking things complete just to keep my list clean. I guess I can look on the bright side -- I'll feel that much better the next time you guys throw that pop up that tells me how many tasks I've completed.

Posted 5 years ago

nskoric says:

+1

This is very annoying "feature" since RTM is one of rare pieces of software that deliberately deletes user information without informing them. I thought that I'm crazy when I noticed that my notes are missing, since I can't remember last time that an app deleted my information on purpose and without my knowledge. I still haven't full recovered my notes since I started trusting RTM and I didn't have a backup of my notes on another service.

Please remove this destructive "feature"! Apps should not delete user information without notice...

Posted 5 years ago

(closed account) says:

+1

Posted 5 years ago

dominic.spachmann says:

+1 :)

Posted 5 years ago

freeminder says:

Actually this behavior is so weird, that I considered it a bug and wanted to report it, then found a page saying it's by design! I converted many of my old "repeat every" tasks to "repeat after" some time ago. It was quite a surprise to learn that all my notes linked to those tasks we lost at some point (and I've already cleared the Completed list since then). Fix this please, there's absolutelly no point to make this behavior different in these two use cases, especially in such a unobvious way.

Posted 5 years ago

marekhappy says:

Started to use RTM 4 days ago... went crazy for like 5 minutes when my notes disappeared in repeated task :D

+1 thanks.

Eventhough RTM has some imperfections like tis, its really solid tool / Good Job ;-)

Posted 5 years ago

codyeilrich says:

I noticed notes are preserved if I complete a task using the android app. I'm not sure why the behavior would be different between mobile and web browser but it is!

Posted 5 years ago

kkyang says:

+1

Posted 5 years ago

blackjack000 says:

+1, the majority of my notes are "repeat after" and I rely heavily on notes for personal notes to myself, often used to speed up the completion of my task. I've resorted to typing in long strings of text into the note description as a workaround. Please consider allowing notes to remain on "repeat after" tasks! Thanks!

Posted 5 years ago

richardn10 says:

+1This mysterious behaviour made me think RTM was unstable and I was going to look for an alternative tool, until I found this page. I rely heavily on notes. It was made more difficult to track the issue down because the notes are not deleted when completing on Android (as noted above).

Posted 4 years ago

mbowes80 says:

+1 - this is important. Notes need to carry over to the next occurrence.

Posted 4 years ago

pachela says:

+1I have repeating tasks to remind me to refill Mom's prescriptions. I keep notes on special instructions from the doc, as well as side effects to watch for and possible interactions. "Repeat after" is a better fit than "repeat every" but I don't want to lose my notes. It doesn't make sense to me that "every" retains the notes, but the very similar "after" drops them. I'm hoping for a fix. Thank you.

Posted 4 years ago

blackjack000 says:

Totally agree. I usually use repeat after x days for my repeating tasks, and use the notes section for any kind of clarifying instructions. Because of RTM's behavior of deleting the notes on these type tasks, I often write in long notes to myself in the task name so I have a place to hold this information. It works, but it clutters up my RTM.

Posted 4 years ago

markmorton says:

Yes please, this is very weird

Posted 4 years ago

zichaj says:

Yes please this just bit me.

Posted 4 years ago

sully says:

How is After vs Every still treating notes differently? Very frustrating.

Posted 3 years ago

davidfarquhar says:

I agree please change to keep notes

Posted 2 years ago

(closed account) says:

On a "Repeat After" the notes are still in the task but the date and time the note was added is defaulted to the task completion date. So if you spoke to 3 people on 3 seperate dates every time you completed a task the note would change to the last date completion. I have started putting a time stamp into the notes so it will be saved

Posted 2 years ago

juliusz.gonera says:

+1. This RTM behavior confused me as well

Stopped using notes at all for repeating tasks because of it

Posted 2 years ago

woutervhb says:

+1

Posted 1 year ago

kngrmd1 says:

if notes are not copied, this is stupid by design

repeats every 2 sundays is different and repeat after 2 sundays is different